Home Internet – The Evolution

We are obviously most definitely living in the age of the computer these days and that means that the vast majority of us own multiple devices that mean that we are surfing on the internet more than ever. Obviously it hasn’t always been this way though and it has only really been in the last 25 years or so that home internet thing has become commonplace. How many of you remember the old clunky Mackintosh at school or the communal family computer that you could only use when nobody was using the telephone?! The evolution of home internet has come a long long way since its first inception and now we can’t even imagine how we survived without our 24 hour constant access. We find it fascinating how far we have come so we’ve decided to write a little piece about home internet has changed and evolved over the years and what is perhaps to come next.

Early to mid-1990s

During this time period many of us were getting hooked up and online with our very first computers which were usually shared between all of the members of the family. Huge and clunky modems were our gateway to the World Wide Web as we tended to call it back then (bit cringeworthy now!) and we had to endure the lenghy and painful sounding internet dial-up only to find our connection suddenly cut when somebody decided to actually make a telephone call! This didn’t dampen our burgeoning attachments to the internet though, in fact we deserve medals really for our heroic patience when it came to getting online with our somewhat slow computers.

Late 1990s to early 2000s

By this time most of us would have at least some form of home internet access and pcs were starting to look a bit less 1980s, especially those beautifully colourful Macs that we all used at school and loved! Even better many phone companies were realising that we needed second phone lines for our internet browsing needs so it was becoming easier to use a dial-up connection to the internet without constant interruption. Big sites like YouTube really started to come into their own although buffering and download times still had a tendency to be painstakingly slow. Wi-Fi slowly started to make its presence known making it easier to connect with our laptops and have a bit more freedom of location.

Mid-2000s to present day

In this time a lot has happened really when it comes to our home internet. Most of now have Wi-Fi throughout our homes which is handy since the majority of us use smartphones, tablets and laptops for browsing online. Broadband has not only become a big thing meaning that download and loading times are now minimal, but now superfast broadband is becoming more and more prevalent too so buffering is becoming less and less of an issue. With our social media accounts we are connected more than ever and use our internet access to stay in touch with our nearest and dearest. It’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come in the last 25 years!